Cultural Psychology of Gender Identity

This edited book analyzes the meaning making process related to gender identity and its performative dimension. We come to life with a body that immediately becomes a cultural body. The identity construction as well as the entire I-other-world relationship is symbolically marked out by socio-historical-cultural expectations related to gender. Based on the sexual organ, newcomers are immersed in a symbolic plot differently entangled for “boys” and for “girls”, through which borders are established to demarcate what is allowed to feel, think and act in the world. Using the theoretical perspective of Cultural Psychology of Semiotic Dynamics, emphasis in the analysis will be given to the concept of border, in order to explore the affective-semiotic dynamics of what the masculine and the feminine mean in our society and the role they play in our psychological functioning. The contributions in this volume focus on the notion of border and its permeability to understand the non-binary gender performativity in different social settings. A central concept in Cultural Psychology is, indeed, the idea that masculine and feminine, when treated as rigid categories, are limiting and repress what is situated in between them. Such process of amplification of the gender category demands the identification of new tensions that go beyond the classic masculinity versus femininity dichotomy. This volume focuses on the semiotic processes in the phenomena related to gender identity and, in such a way, it aims at filling the existing gap in the understanding of the psychological dimension of gender expression. This may provide useful guidelines for psychological interventions in different socio-cultural settings.